The Hilltop (66 page)

“We'll tell him, we'll tell him,” Othniel will say, and slap the technician on the shoulder. They won't say a thing to Roni Kupper, of course, because Roni will no longer be using electricity on the hilltop. If they were to say anything at all to Roni, Othniel thought, it would be a huge and massive thank-you with all their hearts: once for the exposed cables, the electrical patchwork jobs, and burning coil heater that led to the installation of an excellent power supply system; and a second time for the naïve quest to deliver a Purim gift basket to Kharmish, which led to the mother of all Arab riots, with stones and burning tires and shots in the air, the redirecting of the military resources from the outpost to Kharmish, and the postponement of the evacuation to an as-yet-undetermined date, which would be set, or so they were assured, “next week.”

But that same “next week” will see the government fall in a no-confidence vote initiated by the centrist and left-wing parties in the wake of a corruption scandal. The defense minister will devote all his attention to the race for the party leadership and other internal battles (in which the popular slogan aimed at him will be “Scram!”). When Malka, his trusted adviser on settlement affairs, nonchalantly hands him a document for signature that approves the paving of an asphalt road between Ma'aleh Hermesh B. and C. to make things easier for the security forces to move around in the area, he'll sign and won't bother to ask what it's all about.

Major General Giora will be part of the next round of high-ranking appointments and land a senior post with military intelligence, and take along with him Omer Levkovich, who made a good impression on him during the course of the events, and promote him to the rank of major, and they'll spend their days in a quiet office in a well-kept neighborhood somewhere in the heart of middle-class Israel, the center of consensus, with air-conditioned vehicles and comfortable work hours. In the United
States the time for congressional elections will also approach, and the polls will predict a heavy defeat for the president's party, and once the elections pass—with a heavy defeat, indeed—the ground in California will shake violently, and by the time everyone emerges from the rubble and shakes the dust off their clothes, no one will remember Ma'aleh Hermesh C. any longer or the
Washington Post
article, and even the newspaper's editor, who was planning on sending Jeff McKinley to write a “One Year Later” article, will drop the idea due to budget cuts on the foreign desk and instructions from the top to focus on domestic news, and anyway, McKinley himself will be coming to the end of his mission in the Holy Land, will go on a long trip to Burma, fall in love with a young local married woman, get into a messy situation, and quit his job.

No one will have the time to deal with a small, insignificant outpost.

The thirty-eight bronze coins from the period of the Revolt that were found in a cave in the Hermesh Stream riverbed will rot in the warehouses of the Antiquities Authority, and of the two more valuable silver shekels, one will be given to the Israel Museum and the second will be sold at a public auction in New York for $42,000. Othniel will rue the fact that he lost that money, but bless the Lord, he was still in possession of five more coins. Well, of course he kept them. He's too wily a fox, wily enough to know that you never part with all your treasure. When he went to the cave with Dvora, before Duvid's first visit, he swiped several of the coins and kept a few on which he identified Jewish symbols and the words
Sacred Jerusalem
. When Duvid failed to deliver on his promise as an expert, Othniel decided not to tell him about the additional coins. Luckily so. He'll put other connections to work, this time extra carefully, and get to the right person, an antiquities dealer who knows what he's doing. Three of the five coins were silver shekels from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt: two from the second year and one from the fourth year. The fortune they bring him will come at just the right time.

The heavy snow on Purim will cause devastation at the organic farm. The frost will destroy the asparagus, mushroom, arugula, and cherry tomato crops. In addition, Moran (on the ground) and Yakir (from the website) will report a radical increase in demand for organic goat-milk products. And as if to round things off, Gabi will decide that he's sick of
serving as a jack-of-all-trades. He'll ask Othniel for clarification regarding his position, salary, and professional focus. At the end of a meeting the four will hold at Othniel's home over crackers and tea, a few weeks after Purim, a decision will be made to focus on developing the goat farm and dairy, and they'll even draft a multistage five-year plan that will be aided by the profits from the coins, with the objective of increasing the size of the pen to two hundred head and more. Othniel will handle the downsizing of the crop fields and afterward their sale or abandonment (although he will continue to cultivate for self-consumption so as to provide arugula and cherry tomatoes for Rachel's refreshing salads). Gabi will be sent to take a training course on a goat and sheep farm, which will also provide Othniel with new goats. Yakir will reduce the scope of the Internet operations and Moran will switch to direct marketing to stores, particularly in the central region of the country. Gabi will be responsible for the jewel in the crown—the upgrading of the dairy, the acquisition of new machinery, and the creation of a new line of high-quality cheeses: fresh, matured-soft, matured-semi-hard, yogurt, yogurt cheese, with herbs and spices, with microbes and various molds. He will oversee all stages of the preparation—from the pasteurization and the curdling and through to the packaging. His wages will increase significantly, including benefits, terms of employment, and advanced training.

Gitit's Cheesery will flourish thanks to the “Listeria Hysteria” that will strike Israel later in the year. Following an inconclusive case involving a miscarriage that may or may not have been related to the listeria bacteria, Health Ministry inspectors will conduct raids on dairies large and small throughout the land and discover at many of them frightening concentrations of the listeria bacteria. Tons of cheeses will be tossed from store shelves, which will lead initially to the public flocking to buy organic cheeses from private farms, but in the wake of an investigative report by one of the large newspapers, which will warn against unpasteurized organic cheeses that haven't been properly matured, the public would remain confused and hungry. Into the vacuum will slip the cheeses of Gitit's Cheesery—a small, organic, boutique dairy, which indeed uses pasteurized milk, because of a decision Othniel made at the outset, before self-identified experts determined that pasteurization kills
the good enzymes and destroys the flavor. Othniel, after all, kept his distance from those opinionated connoisseurs like he did from the plague, already from way back in the days of his run-in over the plot of land with that patronizing vintner from Ma'aleh Hermesh A.—the run-in that, for all intents and purposes, gave rise to Ma'aleh Hermesh C. Either way, demand will rise by thousands of percent, and Gitit's cheeses will become renowned throughout the country, even after the listeria hysteria subsides.

When he feels too closed in by the developing pen and dairy and longs for the open expanses, Gabi will go out to tend the herd. Once, long ago, he got bored, out with the goats, but now he'll enjoy every moment with them. He'll love stepping out of the physical and into the spiritual, to feel light-footed and not to be enslaved to the place; perhaps he'll feel it's time to broaden his horizons. Like Abel, like our forefather Abraham, like our King David, like our teacher Moses. Out in the pasture, in the company of the veteran goats and young kids and the nameless herding dog—Amalia suggested “Darkie” and Shaulit “Cosby,” but Gabi felt neither was appropriate—he'll find peace, sense the providence, seclude himself and chat with his God, pray and sing and be joyful, for through joy your prayer will enter into the palace of the King. Always through joy? Maybe not always, because longing is infinite, but the agonies are for the good, because the intent of God, blessed be He, is surely there only for the good. Every day he'll walk among the hills and the fields and the wilderness, rest in the shade and chew on the sweet bulbs of the desert storkbill plant, love his beasts and they him, and late in the evening, with the grace of God, he'll hold Shaulit in his arms, and the nameless dog will blow air from his little nose and curl up at their feet with his eyes closed, and she'll sing to him in her charming voice, and her auburn hair will tickle the tip of his nose, and his heart will swell in his chest.

Winds will change, and days will end, and life will go on. The children will grow, the worshippers will pray, the Roman olive trees, the vast majority, at least, will survive just as they have for thousands of years—long before and long after every one of the individuals who pass through here for a fixed period of time. The elderly Arabs who've seen it all will begin their day like always, with two spoons of natural honey and three
spoons of olive oil (mild and too clear, suited to the Japanese palate), and the soldiers will continue to come and go, to climb and descend, to be replaced and return, and eyes will open in the morning and the sun will rise over the desert and set in the evening behind the mountain, and eyes will close, and in between work, and prayer, and rest, and love.

A final inconsequential picture, then, from the days after the snow. Winter on the hilltop, chilly and quiet outside, a few children riding bicycles, Beilin barking out of boredom, and a solitary monotonous sound can be heard over and again: knock-knock-knock, the sound of Gabi's hammer, leisurely knocking nails into planks of wood, which will be assembled one on top of the other, and become walls, and thus resurrect his cabin, which once was, and is no more, and will return. He hammers and hammers with infinite patience. And with the knocking as his backdrop, the thoughts come rushing back, the memories rise to the surface—of people who were and are no longer, who've come and gone their own way, who've played out their roles. Of one immense and powerful and holy God, who sees and knows everything. Of a small hilltop, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of everywhere, bedecked by rocks, and some thorns, and a handful of souls.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Assaf Gavron

English language translation copyright © 2014 by Steven Cohen

Originally published in 2013 in Israel in the Hebrew language.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.